Salta

Another long bus ride, this time from Mendoza to Salta. 20 odd hours or something. Good time for reading books, and updating my vimwiki_markdown gem. Essential for all those vim readers out there ;)

It has been quite nice using the laptop on the long bus rides, even though I only get 4-5 hours of battery as it’s a little old. However, once in Bolivia and Peru, I’ll not use it on the busses.. too much asking for trouble.

Anyway, Salta, founded in 1582, and with quite a lot of nice 19th century buildings, it’s a nice place to walk around for a day or two. Lots of cathedrals. I quite liked the Franciscan one where they had some nice monastic chants playing over the speakers. I also liked the floor that made me feel like I was in an Escher painting.

A definite highlight was the high altitude archaeology museum. For the Inca, mountains were places of worship, and so there are a lot of burial places high high up on the mountains. There was an amazing find of 3 complete mummies up on Mount Llullaillaco. Somewhat controversial as it meant removing the bodies from the mountain. They were probably from rich families, and the children would have had a ceremonial marriage cementing relations between families / geographical areas. Then the children were brought back to their villages, feted, then brought up the hill, given a ceremonial drink to knock them out and finally buried alive. An interesting exhibition though and worth a visit if you’re in the area.

We also took a visit to the Museo de Ciencias Naturales (natural history?). Lots of armadillos. I likes armadillos I does, and pretty bufferflies, and very tiny birds and a Trilobite